The Battleship Algorithm A Game You Can Never Win1 day ago
07:32

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I worked with the United States Navy on the USS Pasadena to show that the game of Battleship isn’t just a series of alpha-numeric volleys that result in either a hit or a miss until one player’s entire fleet has been sunk. Whether we realize it or not, Battleship generates a sophisticated probability density algorithm in your brain that’s constantly re-evaluating and updating strategy with every single move.

Nick Berry of DataGenetics founded a software company, received the Queen’s Award for Technology (UK), and spent a decade working for Microsoft’s Casual Game team... and cracking the code for optimal Battleship play is just the tip of the recreational mathematics iceberg he’s mapped out at DG. Berry’s simulations of Battleship strategies showed a massive disparity between the “hunt and target” strategy that most of us employ and thinking of the board as an ever-changing probability exercise that tests our ability to adapt.

Nuclear Machinist’s Mate Davis and I climbed down into the Pasadena, a nuclear-powered Los Angeles class submarine, to get to the bottom of Berry’s Battleship theory. MMN Davis is highly-trained in fission, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, nuclear technology, and more… and it’ll take that knowledge and a fresh perspective on how we think about the world around us to conquer the vast seas of our kitchen table board games.

Interesting. I've not played since I was a kid, but that's more or less how I used to do it. Fire in the middle, then split the board into quarters, fire in the middle of each quarter, repeat until you get a hit.

easiest or funniest methods to troll the opponent would be by either positioning all of your ships neck and neck together so only a certain part of the board would have the ships hoarded together, OR position all the ships around the board like as though ur attempting to make a frame, meaning every shot ur opponent takes anywhere else will be meaningless waste of time as only the furtherst top, furthest bottom, most left, and most right side will have ships. OR another thing you can do is cheat, move the ships constantly all game repositioning them, OR just lie and say it has'nt been hit lol. none of this works in online versions, but its still thinking outside the box so give me some credit :)